All I Have to Do is Dream (One Sixty-Two: Day 128)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Twenty-Eight: Jason Varitek, Boston Red Sox

I’ve heard a lot of noise in recent days about who should be allowed to worship in what portion of New York City. I’ve also noticed that some very loud individuals have claimed the 47th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement’s March on Washington to put forth their own vision for America.

These voices sound a lot more insular than inclusive, and it was my impression that acceptance and equality were important ideals in this country. So maybe it was my anger at all of this noise that produced my own dream this afternoon as I snatched a rare mid-afternoon nap in the hammock. I did have a dream and, my brothers and sisters, I think I will share it with you.

As so many great dreams do, this one took place in Montclair, N.J. It involved baseball (what a shock!), and a legendary old man. The Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, located on the campus of Montclair State University, currently has an exhibit devoted to New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter. But in my dream, the Jeter exhibit had drawn to a close, and the legendary Yankee for whom this museum is named stood before a podium and announced that he was opening a new exhibit. This one, he said, would be devoted to players in the modern day who had excelled at his position, catcher. And, Yogi said, there would be an entire wall in the exhibit dedicated to Boston Red Sox catcher and captain Jason Varitek.

The response to this announcement was, in a word, bedlam. Yankees fans protested loudly outside the museum, outside Yankee Stadium, and outside the team’s Spring Training base in Tampa, Fla. “This is giving our enemies justification for their existence!” one fan blogged. ““Yogi: It’s Over!” another tweeted. The evening news trucks found a fan who compared this exhibit to opening a Fenway Franks hot dog stand two blocks from Yankee Stadium. Even Newt Gingrich got into the act, speaking about the “historic ignorance of baseball elites.”

But, in my dream, Yogi said he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “It’s déjà vu all over again,” Yogi said. “Every time we’re afraid of something, we reject it with so much hatred that we lose our ideals. We’ve been doing it since Salem, Massachusetts, more than 300 years ago. Why can’t we honor a Red Sox player in New York? All it does it bring people together. Plus, that guy Varitek seems like a pretty good man to me.”

So Yogi didn’t back down. And, in my dream, his exhibit ended up being more popular than any in the history of the museum. Once everyone had settled down, it actually became a gathering place for Red Sox and Yankees fans who wanted to talk about baseball without any of those elevated animosities that have plagued the rivalry over the past decade. The exhibit even attracted national attention, and led to plans for a new exhibit at the St. Louis Cardinals Museum honoring Ernie Banks of the Cubs. Exhibits honoring rivals of the past sprang up in museums, schools, churches, temples, mosques, skyscrapers and stadiums across America. A new movement for peace, love and understanding had begun, and Yogi watched with a smile the whole time.

Forty-seven years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of his own, and he shared it with America. “I have a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ ” Americans heard Dr. King’s words very clearly that day, and many of us have studied these words over the years. But we haven’t always followed the vision inherent in them as closely as we might like.

“The future ain’t what it used to be,” Yogi Berra once said. For the past nine years, a lot of Americans have felt the same. If we’re going to make that future brighter than our worst nightmares envision it to be, we have to take the bold leap of reaching out to all of our brothers and sisters in the name of peace, even when fear and anger stand in the way. That’s my dream, anyway. You might think there was something delusional in that hammock outside, but I’d rather think of it as a very real, and possible, vision.